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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23058112">The Great Gloucester Wine Cellar Raid</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/slotumn/pseuds/slotumn'>slotumn</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wherever the Wind May Take Us [14]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adulthood, Banter, Dialogue Heavy, Drinking, Drinking &amp; Talking, Drunken Shenanigans, Excessive Drinking, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Light Angst, Male Friendship, Post-Golden Deer Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), bros being bros, no beta we die like Glenn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 07:00:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,366</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23058112</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/slotumn/pseuds/slotumn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"...And you flew here as soon as possible to...collect my blood so it could be used for Crest research and save Lysithea, who recently rejected your marriage proposal?"</p><p>"No, I actually came all the way just to raid your family's wine cellar."</p><p>Either way, it was, as his commoner friends often described it, too early for this shit.</p><p>A.K.A. Lorenz and Claude get shitfaced drunk together like true bros.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lorenz Hellman Gloucester &amp; Claude von Riegan, lysithea/claude (background)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wherever the Wind May Take Us [14]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1593274</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Great Gloucester Wine Cellar Raid</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"...Long story short, I abdicated, and I also need a sample of your blood."</p><p>The young heir of House Gloucester shut the door on what must have been a hallucination of his former house leader.</p><p>I must take care to not overexert myself, he thought. Claude is an unconventional man, to be sure, but there's no way a monarch of another country would show up here without an announcement when the sun has barely risen. </p><p>He opened the door again to get a breath of fresh air, and the hallucination walked right in with a "Thanks, I was afraid you'd leave me out in the cold for a second."</p><p>Lorenz fainted.</p><p>---</p><p>It must have been about mid-morning when he woke up again in one of the parlor's sofas. </p><p>The memories of what transpired hit him like a Meteor spell after a brief moment of (blissful) blankness. And sure enough, none other than Claude von Riegan was sitting across the coffee table, with a bottle of wine in hand. </p><p>"Good morning, Lorenz."</p><p>"Claude, surely even you must understand that it's highly unbecoming of a king to--"</p><p>"Hey, I told you, I'm not the king anymore. And as for drinking this early..." </p><p>The dark-haired man looked at the label on the bottle and shook it. </p><p>"...what can I say, your house has good taste in liquor."</p><p>Lorenz forced himself to sit up and pinched the bridge of his nose. </p><p>Focus, he thought. Once again, Claude often took actions that seemed incomprehensible on a surface level, but there is always a method to his madness, so surely there's some sound, logical explanation for...</p><p>"...Is the abdication official and on paper?"</p><p>"The new king's coronation is today."</p><p>"Who might that be?"</p><p>"My cousin, Safa. You've talked to him, right."</p><p>"Yes."</p><p>"He's a capable guy. Was trained right alongside me when we were younger, and he's probably closer to most people's idea of a monarch than myself."</p><p>"I see."</p><p>"And he's going to continue all my policies."</p><p>"That is a relief."</p><p>Silence. </p><p>He finally lifted his head to look at his friend, who was dressed in casual attire with a headband on his head instead of a crown.</p><p>"...And you flew here as soon as possible to...collect my blood so it could be used for Crest research and save Lysithea, who recently rejected your marriage proposal?"</p><p>Claude gave a short, dry laugh and took a swig out of the bottle.</p><p>"No, I actually came all the way just to raid your family's wine cellar."</p><p>Either way, it was, as his commoner friends often described it, too early for this shit.</p><p>---</p><p>"Anyway, I understand if you and Teach and pretty much every single one of our classmates hate me for making a foreign diplomacy issue out of blue one year into the reign," Claude rambled. "But on the positive side, I'm used to being hated, and I probably won't bother you again in exchange for a single blood sample, plus you would have contributed to saving a dear friend's life. Win-win, A-plus scheme, hooray, am I right?"</p><p>"The alcohol is distorting your senses, Claude. You are not thinking clearly."</p><p>"Yeah, that's the whole idea behind drinking."</p><p>Sighing for what must have been the upteenth time that hour, Lorenz picked up the syringe that the former king had tossed in front of him. </p><p>"How much blood do you need?"</p><p>"About halfway should be fine."</p><p>---</p><p>And he wasn't sure how he ended up getting extra liquor to drink along with Claude (straight out of the bottle, which was highly improper behavior) afterwards and listening to more of those drunk ramblings, but the alcohol did a pretty good job making Lorenz accept that his life was bizarre as hell and there was nothing he could do about it. </p><p>"...I was so fucking stupid, planning out a happy future together while she sat there waiting to die! I should have known something was off!"</p><p>"She...didn't...tell you?"</p><p>"Never directly-- wait, she told you?"</p><p>He nodded hazily and laid back further into the couch. </p><p>"She had mentioned something about how she was not "built to last" back in the Academy...I didn't...realize it was this serious...five years?"</p><p>"Yeah, it's, less than five, now."</p><p>Then Claude made a vague flailing motion in the air is his hands and began slurring on about all the times he'd "hooked up" with Lysithea at Fódlan's Locket-- which was absolutely too much information and not something Lorenz wanted to associate with the fairly recent memories of letting the white-haired girl hitch a ride alongside him to the diplomacy meetings, but there was no stopping a drunk Master Tactician. </p><p>"I mean, enlighten me on this, but is it considered bad manners in Fódlan to sleep with a girl like five times and not even tell her that you love her?"</p><p>"The Ordelia territory is right next doors, perhaps you should fly there and tell her that today, if you regret it so much?"</p><p>"No. Not now. Bad timing."</p><p>He sighed. </p><p>"You stubborn damn fool. I take back any praises I may have given you in the past."</p><p>"Oh wow, I'm truly damaged, what will I do without the total of three compliments your gracious self has generously bestowed upon me over the period of six years?"</p><p>"It is truly an enigma, that the silver tongue yours is apparently the only part of you to stay untouched while the rest gets inebriated."</p><p>"And I see that using fancy pretentious vocabulary even while drunk is one of the important qualities of a noble, or something."</p><p>The sound of liquid being gulped down filled the air while neither spoke.</p><p>"...So, you have a Crest of Gloucester sample now, but how exactly do you intend to find Catherine?"</p><p>"Well, there probably aren't too many knights with a glowing bone sword running around in Dagda at a given point."</p><p>"Dagda, is a massive continent. You will need a more specific plan than searching any which way with little information."</p><p>"I'm going to dress up as Archbishop Rhea or a spider and wait for Catherine and Shamir to come kill me."</p><p>"..."</p><p>"...No, I actually have a plan that involves pulling some Brigid-associated strings, because Almyra and Dagda both have diplomatic connections there and Petra is a friend and...yeah."</p><p>"Hm..."</p><p>"I'm also going to search any which way with little information, just to be clear."</p><p>"Of course."</p><p>---</p><p>By noon, both of them were too drunk to function, so Lorenz asked a servant to prepare a spare bedroom while apologizing profusely (and incoherently) for both of their behaviors.</p><p>"Heeeey, 'm the one who started  'll th' dr'nking, ya know..."</p><p>"Yes, that is," he paused to swallow a hiccup, "exactly the problem, and you...should not repeat incidents like this...because it is unbecoming...and..."</p><p>"Y'said that like five times 'lready, g'ds."</p><p>"Did I...? Well, I have, no memorization...memory...recollection of, ahem, such things--"</p><p>He turned around and bumped into a tall, solid object.</p><p>"--or this...big thing...wall..."</p><p>"That'sa d'rrr."</p><p>"Yes, yes, a...door..."</p><p>His vision was getting all blurry, so he felt around for a doorknob and found it after about two minutes. </p><p>Right when he creaked it open and felt a refreshing breeze hit his face, he heard Claude say something behind him. </p><p>"You have yet more topics to, ahem, blabber about, after...all this...?"</p><p>"Uh, n't really...just...whatw's I g'nna say..."</p><p>"..."</p><p>"...like, stay healthy 'nd stuff, L'renz...d'n't go dying on us, ya feel? 'S selfish of me, but 'm sick 'nd tired of being sc'red f'r people I care ab't."</p><p>Using the doorway as a support, Lorenz turned around and faced the man who was once a rival, a classmate, a leader, and now, a friend who trusted him enough to get shitfaced together. </p><p>"Much, ahem, the same for you, Claude...you may not be a king anymore, but, remember that you...still got...still have the...duties, as, our friend...to take care of yourself."</p><p>The Golden Deer leader simply laughed and flopped around on the floor in response. </p><p>Lorenz sighed, mumbled a goodbye, and took about three steps outside before remembering this was his house and blacking out. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Dumbasses getting drunk is always fun to write.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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